The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  The Apparition, the Man of Mystery, the Mystery of Evil, the Master of the World for a Time, the ‘He who must come first’, stood there in his glory, but that glory was made out of tampered-with light. He was Peleus, he was Kasmir Gorshok, he was Casey Szymansky of Chicago and of the Zodiac, he was Antichristus. There was worldwide adoration on the spherical sphere, on the apparition-sphere.

  The Argo landed at Habonim where the hilly ‘Plains of Megiddo’ began (It's called Armageddon in Scripture). From here the great Kasmir would rule for a while. Then he would destroy the world, or be destroyed in the Great Battle.

  But Melchisedech Duffey was solidly back into his own flesh now. No longer was he a bones-only man.

  There were surely a million people waiting on that shore, and most of them were the high notables of the world. There were very few of the five billion people of the world who didn't accept it. Every compass needle in the world pointed to the Plains of Megiddo now. And what sort of an Elect was it that remained undeceived, though shaken by its influence? In the immediate neighborhood that Elect was composed of only three persons, and one of them was a dog. “I wonder why Casey didn't sweep us in too?” Brannagan questioned. “I didn't know he had such power. We're lucky to be able to escape him here, and to escape out of here.”

  “A false prophet is not without honor save on his own ship,” Melchisedech mumbled in his beard.

  “But Duffey, I can't believe that Casey is really the Man of Mystery, the Antichristus. I believe that he is only one of the flamboyant and high ranking partisans of the Man of Mystery, like, well like the Laughing Prince of sad memory. For one thing, it has been said that nobody has ever seen the face of the Man of Mystery, and we have seen the face of Casey many times.”

  “I'm not sure that we have,” Melchisedech argued. “We have seen a dozen of his faces, always remarkably handsome, and always looking something like each other, as cousins will resemble each other. But have we ever seen his real face?”

  “Casey is the Antichristus!” the dog Gunboat Smith argued with the stubbornness of opinion that all English Bulldogs have.

  “Quiet, Dog,” Melchisedech ordered. “Whether he is or not, we will never admit that he is. There is stark madness rife in the world this morning. Let us not add to it.”

  A million people on that shore? There were a billion or more people on that shore, and occupying hill after hill turning them black with humanity.

  “We want to be where the blood runs deepest!” black people shouted across roiling water to the persons on the Argo. “This is to be the Armageddon, and the blood will run in rivers bridle deep on the horses.”

  “No, that happens only in tall stories,” Duffey spoke.

  “You ask for a sign,” came the clear voice of Casey Gorshok of the Zodiac and Chicago across the miles, “and I will give you a small and easy sign. See the ship Argo shining in the sun, and its name ‘Holy Argo’ written in brightness? I will rewrite that golden name in blood.”

  And the new name ‘Ship of Fools’ was written in flame and blood on the ship that had been the Holy Argo.

  “It's fading out from us. We're leaving it behind,” Gunboat Smith spoke in his deep English Bulldog throat. “What, the Argo has disappeared also while we gazed at those noddies on the shore!”

  “We'll find her again someday,” Melchisedech averred with only a little bit of doubt. “I seem to see myself rediscovering her, in disguise and in the hands of a sly hull-dealer in New Orleans many years from now. There, or somewhere else we'll find her. Till then, my friends.”

  “We go back,” Gunboat growled. “We couldn't stop it. Maybe we'll stop it the next time.”

  “Gunboat, Gunboat,” Brannagan chided him. “From the unholy talking dogs who had caught the false spirit, you have picked up the unholy habit of talking. Give up the evil and unseemly thing. Possibly we failed to stop it many times, and we are not even sure there is another chance. Well, we go back, one way or another, and we fade out—”

  Biloxi Brannagan faded out first. Gunboat Smith, after a deep and comprehending growl to indicate that he would never again indulge in unholy dog talk, faded out next. The entire surroundings and ambient were gone— And Duffey himself was fading out of there, and fading in somewhere else, in another time and place. Duffey was swimming in doubtful water, and perhaps he was drowning in it. Then the ocean became a little more cheerful, a little more self assured as it were. “If I'm drowning I may as well drown cheerfully,” Duffey said in an aside to himself. No, the whole of his life did not flash before his eyes in those fragments or seconds, but significant pieces of his early life did flash before him.

  There were the times when he had been the Boy King of Salem and had done magic. And he'd had black giants to serve him. He had made birds out of clay and flung them into the air and they flew.

  A couple of millennia later in his boyhood, in Iowa and in other places, he had been the Boy King in disguise. There also he had had black giants to command, but they were invisible to all except himself. There were early years where he was shuffled from one set of false kindred to other sets of false kindred. There was the forever-blessed boarding school where a few persons, Sebastian Hilton, John Rattigan, Lily Kock, understood that he really was a king in disguise. There was Charley Murray who did magic tricks while Duffey did real magic. But Charley, his best friend, had a better line of patter, and was more applauded than was Melchisedech.

  The sky and the water had become younger now, and it was foolish to fear that one might die by drowning. There was the exuberance of youth on everything.

  There had been the meteoric gold-touched business venture in St. Louis. There was the foster brother Bagby. There was the Rounder's Club, as fine a club as any in the world. There was Sister Mary Louise. There was Olga Sanchez of the torchy shoulders, Helen Platner of the Bavarian Club, Papa Piccone of the Star and Garter Club, Beth Keegan who was an ivory statuette.

  And following that, Melchisedech, then probably being in his seventeenth year, in a very early morning, had walked out on the river shore in St. Louis, just below the Eads Bridge, and he had walked right onto a low-lying boat that had been the Argo in disguise. Oh happy water, he was very near that place again.

  “I had forgotten how wonderful it was to be not quite seventeen,” he chuckled to himself. Then he quoted “I shall arrive. What time, what circuit first, I ask not.” What a time to be quoting Browning. A new joy, even a glee, had taken over everything. It was a young ocean now and a young sky over it. There were youthful sea creatures and river creatures, possibly not entirely authentic, cavorting around him with happy noises. They looked a little bit like creatures in certain comic paintings that Finnegan had done long ago. Long ago from when? Just how old was Finnegan now?

  It was the year 1923 and Duffey was quite a young man. Finnegan (John Solli) had been born June 1, 1919 so he was about four years old and hadn't done any significant painting yet. Now it was the year 1923 and Melchisedech Duffey swam at the same time out of the ‘Sea of Lost Years’ and out of the young and joyously muddy Mississippi River. He climbed onto the shore just below the Eads Bridge in St. Louis, MO. He has never been so happy in any of his lives. He was twenty-three years old and no age is happier than that.

  “Oh, I see by your face how young and handsome I am,” he cried in joy to Pseudo-Melchisedech who was standing before him there looking very young-mannish and very sad. “It isn't permitted to be sad, not when you're so happy,” Melchisedech told the creature.

  “You have now lived through the lost years of your life seven times,” the young and sad creature told Melchisedech, “and you've died seven deaths. These lives and these deaths have been widely different. You know that, don't you?”

  “Not consciously, but, yes, I've known it,” said Happy Duffey.

  “You've known that each set of your lost years were pretty sketchy, haven't you? That you've lived only selections of those world years?”

  “Absolutely no!” Duffey de
clared. “What I have lived, I've lived fully. There's been nothing sketchy about it.”

  “Have you any idea why this has happened to you?”

  “Because I am a Magician, a Magus,” Melchisedech spoke out of his youthful joy. “And also because (I hate to say this about so great an entity) because God doesn't quite know how to end the World Affair. He's started many things, but he's never ended anything yet. And the endings are the hardest. I think he's using myself and various other of his Magicians to explore various endings.”

  “Do you really think so? Oh, no, no, you laughing Judas! That wouldn't be possible. You do know that after three of your deaths you were damned to Hell.”

  “And after the other four of them I wasn't,” Melchisedech spoke happily. “So I'm ahead of the game. And I know that the rehearsals are over with, or that they were an illusion. Now I must play my happy role in the last five or six decades of the world. And this time we will do it without the Instructions that were given us during the rehearsals. I do not understand it at all, and I'm happy that I don't. Some of those who have other roles may understand it. But I'm twenty-three years old, probably for the last time, and the world is my oyster.”

  “Do you know what I am?” the strange and boyish double of Melchisedech Duffey asked him.

  “I know that you are an Angel,” Melchisedech said. “But there are two sorts of them. Are you an Angel of God or of the Devil?”

  “Of God,” said the creature. “Yes, I'm quite certain of that.”

  “Look, pale reflection of myself,” Melchisedech crowed, “I've just had a seven part daydream or hallucination. And whether each part of it lasted one minute or seventy years is no matter. It seems now that the whole thing was no more than one minute.

  “The world is a kaleidoscope, ever-changing, ever-enchanting, did you know that, My Reflection? And one best strides happily laughing and singing through it, and the fact that one is striding through the hot ashes of Hell every step of the way is no reason to be less merry. If one looks down and sees that he is no more than ankle-deep in Hell, let him continue with a happy heart. But if he sees that he is more than knee-deep in Hell, then he must, then he must, what must he do then, pale reflection of me?”

  “I don't know,” said the creature with its paler face of Duffey.

  “Maybe that's when he should leave the land for a while and walk on the water,” Melchisedech declared. “Remember, Reflection, that man in his original nature was able to walk on water. He is still able to do it, but sometimes he forgets that he is.” Then Melchisedech Duffey turned and ran to the city singing happily.

  “I lied to him and I lied to myself,” said the unhappy Angel who wore Duffey's face. “No, no, I'm not certain at all which one of them I serve. I'm afraid to be certain or even to think about it. Is it God or the Devil that I serve in my confusion and darkness?”

  But Melchisedech Duffey, singing happily, was into the city in the bright morning. And he didn't hear the creature at all.

  The Man Who Lost His Magic

  The people of Magic Meadows called Jacob Grim ‘The Man with the Hatchet Face’. Yes, he had a hatchet face, and a bladed brain that would cut through every sort of nonsense. That was why he was sent from the Commonwealth to regularize the irregular people of the Meadows, and also to find what had happened to all the other investigators who had been sent to the Meadows on the same mission. Among the investigators who had disappeared was Jacob's own brother. Jacob, however, was a kind and considerate man. It was only an accident of mismatching that he had a hatchet face. Jacob was the best-dressed man in Magic Meadows, except during moments when he lost his pants. And he was the richest man in the Meadows, except that every householder there had five hundred gold doubloons hidden in a bucket under a stone of the floor of his hovel. And Jacob's wealth was nowhere near that.

  Jacob went out early one morning, and the first person he saw was a nine-year-old girl named Täuschung or Illusion. And she sang:

  “Old Grim Jacob, hear my chants

  Notice, Grim, you've lost your pants.”

  And Jacob Grim felt the cold wind strike him in his skinny shanks and in his heart. He knew that he hadn't really lost his pants, that it was only a local silliness, a regional illusion. And if one believed that these childish tricks of these benighted people were real, how was one superior to them?

  And the five hundred gold ducats or doubloons that every household in the Meadows possessed weren't real either. The people were always glad to show Jacob their gold, but they always said a rhyme before they lifted the stone in their kitchen floor:

  “Keeper of the golden pile,

  Bring it here a little while.”

  And there would be a golden ringing and chiming under their floor that was the gold arriving. Jacob Grim had examined this revealed gold carefully. It was all Empress Maria Theresa Doubloons of the year 1763. And once when Jacob had been handling such gold it disappeared completely. That meant that some other householder had rhymed the gold to come to him. There was only one such cache of gold in the Meadows, and the householders shared it casually. No, in truth there was not even one cache of gold. It was only a local glob of magic, which is another word for silliness or superstition.

  The next person Jacob met that morning was the mother of the nine-year-old girl. With a quick smile and an outpouring of kindness, the mother chanted a counter-rhyme:

  “Be my fellow, now, anon

  See, your pants have come back on.”

  And of course Jacob's pants were back on. But it wasn't magic; it was only the bursting of an illusion. The young mother was named Zauberei or Enchantment. Both the mother and the daughter said that they were the same person. And no one had ever seen them together. On this morning, the daughter had gone behind a Rowan tree, and the mother had emerged from the other side of it.

  “Tonight is Fly-Night,” said Zauberei the mother. “When it comes on Tuesday, as it does tonight, the flying is exceptionally good. Funny Jacob, what are you really trying to find out in the Meadows?”

  “I want to find out what happened to the other men who were sent here from the Commonwealth, especially my brother.”

  “I'll show you what's left of them when you fly with me tonight.”

  “Do you really believe that you can fly, Zauberei?”

  “I do believe it, and my believing makes it so. And I'll trick you into believing and you'll fly also. Great blathering bot-flies! — you've seen me fly more than once!”

  “No. I've experienced the illusion of seeming to see it.”

  Another interesting person in the Meadows was Schwarzkunstler who was a necromancer and magician. “Good Jacob Grim,” this magic-man said this day. “The World of the Commonwealth that you think you come from does not exist on the same plane as the Magic Meadows here. One is only a metaphor of the other. Which?”

  “Wizard, our great world of Science and Technology is the great and real world,” Jacob maintained solidly. “And the Meadows must become more than a metaphor. It must give up its superstitions and it must tell its secrets, especially its secret of what happened to my brother.”

  “Oh, I can take you to your brother's bones, Good Jacob. They don't look very vital, but they're conscious and they talk very entertainingly.”

  “My brother, is he alive or dead?” Jacob demanded.

  “ ‘Dead’ and ‘Alive’ are not such opposites as you might think, Jacob. According to my arts—”

  “Oh damn you and your black arts! My brother's blood cries out to me from a jagged and murderous place.”

  “Oh, the Valley may seem a bit jagged and murderous to those who take your world of the Commonwealth to be fact. But, Good Jacob, there is not any such world of Great Science and Technology as you believe in. There is only a dank conspiracy to dream such a world. We don't accept it.”

  Jacob Grim was at a disadvantage against the Magician, but he had a mission to fulfill.

  “I'm having trouble with the unsubstantiality of yo
ur Meadows and of yourself, twinkling man,” Jacob stated. “You people must now take on the responsibility of substantiality and of anxiety so as to become of some good to the Commonwealth.”

  “Good Jacob, the collecting of tales was once the hobby of your now living-dead brother. It was a recreation away from your learned untwisting of twisted tongues. Think how much better it would have been if the tales had been the central thing to you, and if the philological games had seemed the recreation. It's almost into the heat of the day now. Come sit in the shade with me while I unwind my own tongue.”

  “I'll listen a while,” said Jacob. They sat in the noontime shade, and the Sorcerer unwound his own tongue and began:

  “Out of curiosity, I spent three days on the Ark with Noah. When I got there, the Giant Gog was sitting astride the bean-pole of the ark and he intended to ride out the flood that way. But he was already very seasick. Giants get seasick very easily. On the ark, I learned the answer to a question that wan-wits still ask: how could Noah have carried enough fodder to feed all the beasts on his ark? The answer is that he did not feed them. He cast an ocean-sleep over all the creatures, and they hibernated without eating for the entire voyage. This was no great trick for Noah. He was a Magician even as I am. Is that scrap of a tale in the folk tales you've examined?”

  “Yes, Sorcerer, but it doesn't deserve to be.”

  “Let's try another tale and see whether it will fly. Methuselah, the longest-lived man ever, was on the Ark for a while. ‘Noah and all his household’ got on the ark according to scripture, and those getting off the ark according to the same scripture were Noah and his wife, and his three sons and their wives. Methuselah was Noah's grandfather, and was a member of his household. He got on, but he didn't officially get off. ‘I always wanted to be buried at sea,’ that old man said, ‘me, who had never seen a sea. I wondered how God would fulfill this wish of mine, but who would have thought of doing it this way?’ Oh yes, we buried him at sea. I was an eyewitness.”